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Assessment of medical morbidities in a rhesus monkey model of naturally occurring low sociality - PubMed

. 2021 Jul;14(7):1332-1346.

doi: 10.1002/aur.2512. Epub 2021 Apr 12.

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Assessment of medical morbidities in a rhesus monkey model of naturally occurring low sociality

Adam K Myers et al. Autism Res. 2021 Jul.

Abstract

People with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) exhibit a variety of medical morbidities at significantly higher rates than the general population. Using an established monkey model of naturally occurring low sociality, we investigated whether low-social monkeys show an increased burden of medical morbidities compared to their high-social counterparts. We systematically reviewed the medical records of N = 152 (n = 73 low-social; n = 79 high-social) rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) to assess the number of traumatic injury, gastrointestinal, and inflammatory events, as well as the presence of rare medical conditions. Subjects' nonsocial scores, determined by the frequency they were observed in a nonsocial state (i.e., alone), and macaque Social Responsiveness Scale-Revised (mSRS-R) scores were also used to test whether individual differences in social functioning were related to medical morbidity burden. Medical morbidity type significantly differed by group, such that low-social monkeys incurred higher rates of traumatic injury compared to high-social monkeys. Nonsocial scores and mSRS-R scores also significantly and positively predicted traumatic injury rates, indicating that monkeys with the greatest social impairment were most impacted on this health measure. These findings from low-social monkeys are consistent with well-documented evidence that people with ASD incur a greater number of traumatic injuries and receive more peer bullying than their neurotypical peers, and add to growing evidence for the face validity of this primate model. LAY SUMMARY: People with autism exhibit multiple medical problems at higher rates than the general population. We conducted a comprehensive medical record review of monkeys that naturally exhibit differences in sociality and found that low-social monkeys are more susceptible to traumatic injuries than high-social monkeys. These results are consistent with reports that people with autism also incur greater traumatic injury and peer bullying and add to growing evidence for the validity of this monkey model.

Keywords: Social Responsiveness Scale; animal model; autism spectrum disorder; medical morbidities; rhesus macaque; social behavior.

© 2021 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals LLC.

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Conflict of interest statement

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

All authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1

Flow diagram of study procedures. The flow diagram details the progress from social classification through statistical analysis for this medical record review study. Quantitative social behavior observations were previously conducted for four monkey cohorts and a subset of the animals were classified as low-social or high-social monkeys (see description in text). Electronic and physical medical records were then reviewed and scored, and data analyzed as detailed in the figure (N = 152)

FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2

Medical morbidities by group. Only trauma events differed significantly between low-social (n = 73) and high-social (n = 79) monkeys. Data are plotted as the LSM ± SE number of morbidity events. The LSM was calculated at the mean log age at medical record review (66 months). Data were analyzed and are plotted on a log scale

FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3

Fine-grained trauma-related medical record review by group. (a) The mean number of total injuries in the medical record was significantly greater in low-social (n = 73) compared to high-social (n = 79) monkeys. (b) The mean number of injuries per trauma event did not differ by group. (c) The mean trauma severity scale score per injury did not differ by group. All data are plotted as LSM ± SE. The LSM was calculated at the mean log age at medical record review (66 months). (a) and (b) Are plotted and analyzed on a log scale; (c) is untransformed. LSM, least square mean

FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4

Relationships between sociality measures and total number of traumatic injuries received. (a) Nonsocial equivalence score significantly and positively predicts total number of traumatic injuries received (N = 152). (b) mSRS-R score significantly and positively predicts total number of traumatic injuries received (N = 91). Data are plotted corrected (partialled) for other terms in the model. Thus, we figured the least squares line for each data point and then plotted the data point as the residual from this expected value. This is directly equivalent to the calculations for plotting an LSM ± SE. These values were then scaled to the same range as the original data. Given the log–log model, this means that each data point is corrected from the observed age to the mean log age of the animals in the data set. This is 66 months of age for (a) and 67 months of age for (b). The data are plotted on a log scale to reflect the linearity and homogeneity of variance of the underlying analysis

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